Oracle offers almost $7bn for middleware vendor in a letter to its board of directors

Oracle has today confirmed a near $7bn bid for BEA Systems. The database giant sent a letter to BEA's board of directors earlier this week to make the offer, which could see Oracle pay $6.7bn for the firm - a 25 percent premium over BEA's 12 October closing price.

Oracle president Charles Phillips said, "We have made a serious proposal including a substantial premium for BEA. Both Oracle and BEA customers will benefit from this increase in engineering investment as they migrate to modern SOA technologies."

If the deal does go through, Oracle will have removed one of the chasing pack of service-oriented architecture vendors trying to compete with the big four comprising IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

News of the possible Oracle/BEA tie-up follows hot on the heels of SAP's acquisition of Business Objects, announced earlier this week.